Cult of Mac’s new design

Craig Grannell ()

As you’ve probably noticed (assuming you’ve been here before), Cult of Mac today got a new paint job. We’ve made a bunch of changes, most of which are designed to make the site simpler to use and the information within easier to access.

Having found that about 90% of Cult of Mac’s readers are using displays 1200px or wider, we’ve widened the site, to provide more space for content, [update]and then put it back the way it was, because lots of people complained. The simpler, cleaner layout means less wasted space and more focus for the articles, along with the ability for us to more easily add components. And the new navigation should make it easier for you to stream the content you’re most interested in. We’ve also rehoused the ‘top stories’ to the sidebar, meaning they’re accessible from all pages.

Over the coming months, further changes and upgrades will be made to the site, but please use the comments section of this post to tell us what you’d like to see. What do you like and not like about the site? How can we improve Cult of Mac and make it the Mac site for you?

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About the author

Craig Grannell

Craig Grannell is Cult of Mac's designer and an occasional contributor. He also runs iPhoneTiny.com, a Twitter-driven reviews site for iPhone apps and games. Follow Craig on Twitter @CraigGrannell and visit his website, Snub Communications.

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  • http://gallery.me.com/cargoplex Cargoplex

    In the words of Homer, “Boooring.”

  • http://macsteps.com/ Tom Borowski

    Craig,

    great choice making the backgrounds of the top and bottom banners a grey gradient. Very subtle, doesn’t clutter and puts emphasis on the content.

    Tom

  • Don

    Too much whitespace. Wasting pixels!

  • http://www.snubcommunications.com Craig Grannell

    “Too much whitespace. Wasting pixels!”

    There’s actually far less ‘wasted’ space on this design than the previous one, due to ditching the rounded box each article sat in and the space between them.

    @Tom: The gradient device for advertising is one I’ve used before, and it seemed a good bet for this site. Thanks for nudging me.

  • Guillaume

    This new design is hideous. The other design was awesome and I liked it a lot. This new design is a waste of space, it lacks life and colors. Please go back to the old design cause I might just delete Cult of Mac from my bookmarks…

  • B. Stafford

    Most users might have 1200 pixel wide monitors, but your utilization of the extra width is bad. Even in the 1800s they knew something you don’t. Wide lines of type are harder for humans to read. This is why newspapers still run columns two and half inches wide. Learn from what came before you, young Jedi.

  • Lucas

    the new wider layout blows. way to say “f you” to those that use less than a mega monitor. here’s a thought. don’t use absolute layouts. there’s nothing wrong with letting them adjust a little so some of us don’t have to scroll over to see everything.

    also, there’s not enough white. seriously. there needs to be a lot more white.

  • Bert Vanderveen

    Hey guys, there’s a rule in graphic design about the width of a line of text. Newspapers get by with 6 or 7 words on a line (which is about 45 to 50 characters) and a novel or that kind of book, with 10 to 14 words a line.

    Your design is way over these values and to make matters even worse the linefeed is the same as the fontsize, which makes it hard for a reader to follow the line of text.

    So, my advice to you is to do some work on your css: up the basic type size, and/or up the line feed. Or lower the column width.
    As it is now you are NOT doing anything for readability…

    Oh — a good example of a very well designed site is Daring Fireball. Even though the basic type is small, it is very readable.

  • http://trackandbuy.com/ Mike

    Just because our screen resolutions are set at 1200+ width doesn’t mean that we want the browser to take up all the space. I typically have half a dozen apps I’m using, and the web browser window is much, much smaller.

  • http://www.justasithought.com Gene

    Sorry to be negative, but it’s spectacularly ugly.
    I’d fathom that most readers here are using Macs, which come equipped with some beautiful fonts which render gorgeously… but you’re using the same tired Microsoft web fonts that everyone else uses, and in a design that looks at best unfinished and at worst indifferent.
    This was actually DESIGNED? By a “cutting edge” web designer? The old design was FAR superior.

  • Francoise

    All you’re missing are the google ads to finish this new “look”.

    Seriously, this is NOT an improvement. Even Lifehacker and Gizmodo make more effort at jazzing up their bland, peppered with ads, white space. This screams “garage PC repair shop”.

    What was the reason for all this? Accommodating wider screens? You can still keep the previous design and just widen things a little.

    WordPress.org has lots of nice modern looking free themes if you’re pressed for time or money. ;)

  • http://www.snubcommunications.com Craig Grannell

    OK. Quick post, because I’m pressed for time this morning.

    First, thanks for all the feedback—especially those people who’ve taken the time to be constructive. The reason I put a post here was to provide people with a place to say their piece, and some of these things have been taken into account.

    The first thing that is going to change is the site’s width, which will be knocked back by about 200px within the next three days. We tried an experiment, and it didn’t work. Therefore, we’ll be going with the majority on this one. This should also help those complaining about readability (although, interestingly, the content area isn’t actually that much wider than on the old design, and the font size/line-height is identical).

    We’ll also be adding to this design over time when it comes to extra visual interest (note the new banner backgrounds, for example), but won’t be returning to the relative clutter of the older designs.

    Now, to address some specific points:

    @Gene: I’m not sure what you’re talking about regarding the “same tired Microsoft web fonts that everyone else uses”. Cult of Mac uses Lucida variants for its type, which are the same fonts Apple uses. And although most readers of our site use Macs, there’s still a very sizeable minority using Windows.

    @Francoise: Our reasoning for this was outlined in the post. The aim is to make the site more usable and scalable for the various things we’ll be working on over the coming months. Due to the nature of the previous design, it simply wasn’t suitable for this purpose. Plus, frankly, everyone was always bitching about how dull and grey it was…

  • Parnico

    I’m really sorry to say this, i really hate the new look of the site, gosh its a mac related website, be creative,….or at least, go back to your old design,….

  • http://cultofmac.com Leander Kahney

    @mark and everyone else. Thanks everyone for the feedback. Nothing is set in stone. Craig is tweaking the site and will continue to do so. I for one think it’s an improvement — for the reasons Craig states above. If nothing else, it’s a modern, standards-based platform ready for future improvement.

  • http://fotoqanda.blogspot.com Bill

    I am a fan of minimalist design so I’m onboard with the redesign on that point, even though this is pushing the edge of minimalist for me, I’m tempted to say its not.

    I do not however enjoy this much white space. It would just be far easier on the eyes if the background was darker. A lot of applications (almost all of Adobe for instance) are moving to darker backgrounds that can be stared at for hours at a time without nearly so much eye strain.

    The other thing though, I don’t even know the cause of it. When I click on a post and read it, and then I click on my back button to return to the main article list, I expect to be taken back to the article I clicked on in the first place, not dumped back at the top of the page all the time. Is this just me thats getting this or is it a page design thing? I noticed this as a bug in the last design too so I guess it might even just be me, but I don’t get this with a lot of other pages.

  • Macca

    I like it. Clean, simple, tidy and room to breathe. I like the blue line.

  • http://www.theflyerwall.co.uk/ Macgeek

    I’ll be honest, the first time I saw the new design I thought maybe there was some kind of problem with the site and that this was some kind of temporary design…….

    The old design had style, this one feels cold & empty and not very mac-like.

  • Barry

    The new design (as of 8-Nov) is much better. It’s still clean but has a nice Leopard vibe.

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